Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 33, Issue 2, 2009

The theory of creole genesis developed in Lefebvre (1998 and related work) is formulated within the framework of the processes otherwise known to play a role in language genesis and language change in general, that is, relexification, grammaticalisation and reanalysis. This paper evaluates the respective contribution of these processes to creole genesis and development. The following issues are taken up. Can functional categories undergo relexification? Is the process at work in creole genesis best characterised as relexification or as transfer? Can there be cases of partial relexification? Are grammaticalisation and reanalysis distinct processes? Is keeping them separate useful in studying creole genesis and development? How are these three processes articulated with respect to each other in creole genesis and development?

Cases from Sranan are presented in order to illustrate the various processes and mechanisms involved in developments in a creole language that could be interpreted as grammaticalization. While we do find “ordinary” grammaticalization, substrate patterns sometimes provided a model. In the extreme case, where the development consists of a large shortcut, grammaticalization as a usage-based process is no longer at issue, but rather a kind of local relexification variously referred to as “calquing” (Keesing 1991), “apparent grammaticalization” (Bruyn 1996), or “polysemy copying” (Heine and Kuteva 2005). Yet other cases involve reanalysis of a lexifier form without grammaticalization (Detges 2000). Distinguishing between the various types of developments is essential both for understanding the processes shaping creoles, and for delimiting the concept of grammaticalization.

This paper investigates the grammar and usage of one in Singapore English, which exhibits the influence of both Chinese and English, the two dominant languages in the multilingual ecology of Singapore English, as well as the influence of relevant linguistic universals. The grammar of one is essentially the grammar of Chinese de filtered through the morphosyntax of English one. The corpus data show that some one forms which are judged acceptable by native-speaker informants have nevertheless low frequency of use. I argue that usage plays an important role in the success of contact-induced grammatical innovation, and propose an exemplar-based model of relexification that provides a satisfactory explanation of the grammatical properties and usage patterns of one in Singapore English.

It is widely acknowledged that developments in bilingual individuals parallel, and ultimately underlie, those taking place in the course of contact-induced change. In this paper we address the poorly understood relationship between the individual and community-level processes, focusing on the process of grammaticalization in circumstances of language contact and the corresponding developmental processes in bilingual acquisition. The phenomena chosen for discussion are drawn from Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) and from the Hong Kong Bilingual Corpus (Yip & Matthews 2000, 2007). Parallel developments in SCE and bilingual acquisition are analysed as cases of contact-induced grammaticalization as defined by Heine and Kuteva (2003; 2005), with some modifications. The emergence of already as a marker of aspect presents a case of ‘ordinary’ contact-induced grammaticalization, while the development of grammatical functions of give represents a case of replica grammaticalization. One implication of these findings is that bilingual first language acquisition is a possible route for substrate influence, both in general and specifically in the development of contact languages such as pidgins and creoles.

The “hybrid” prosodic systems described for several Caribbean creoles challenge typologies that dichotomize between “intonation languages” and “tone languages” or between “stress” and “pitch-accent” languages. A more nuanced differentiation emerges if languages are compared in terms of questions concerning tone inventory and tune-text alignment, such as: Are the tunes of short utterances composed primarily of tone patterns specified to contrast words or of intonation patterns that are morphemes in their own right? What determines tune-text alignment at the lowest levels of the prosodic hierarchy? Should tones be anchored to rhythmically prominent syllables within focused constituents? This paper explores these questions for several languages with “hybrid” prosodic systems including some where the hybrid nature cannot plausibly be attributed to language contact.

This paper looks at the relations between tone and features from other phonological subsystems in Papiamentu. It proposes that the interaction of tonal features with features from stress and intonational subsystems provides important clues about the typological classification of Papiamentu as a tone language. Moreover, the taxis of tones, or their organization in the string, also provides a better understanding of this language. Papiamentu fits the description of tone-restricted languages but also exhibits features of intonational systems.

Saramaccan, a maroon creole of Suriname, shows evidence of having a split lexicon where the majority of its words are marked for pitch accent but an important minority are marked for tone. The basic origins of this split would appear to be clear: pitch-accented words represent transfer of a European-like accent system, while tonal words represent transfer of an African-like tone system. If this is the right account, its apparent simplicity raises an important question: Why didn’t it happen more often? While a definitive answer cannot yet be given, it is suggested that a likely explanation is that the split lexicon was not a product of creolization but, rather, the result of a restricted kind of language mixing, which took place after marronage, and that this mixing was employed as a means of establishing a distinct speech variety for the nascent Saramaccan community.